Sovietization
of Baltic States 'Worse Than Any Occupation,' Russian Historian
Saysby Paul
Goble

On-going
series: Crisis in the Caucasus - 2009
The Russian / Georgian Conflict and Its Impact on AzerbaijanWindow on Eurasia: Original
Blog Article

Vienna, January 13 - On the 18th anniversary of USSR President
Mikhail Gorbachev's use of lethal force in Vilnius, a Russian
portal has posted a recent lecture by a Russian historian who
concludes that the incorporation of the Baltic states into the
Soviet Union in 1940 was "worse than any occupation"
and created "a headache" for Moscow that continues
to this day.

In that talk delivered last
month, Elena Zubkova, a senior scholar at the Moscow Institute
and the author of "The Baltic Region and the Kremlin' (2008),
argued that both Russians and citizens of the Baltic countries
have incomplete and often distorted understandings of what happened
in 1940 http://www.polit.ru/lectures/2009/01/13/pribalt.html

If one looks at Moscow's approach
to the Baltic countries in 1939-40, Zubkova said, it is clear
that "this was above all an imperial project of Stalin,
a project for restoring the empire despite the fact that in its
details, its realization was seriously affected by the current
political arrangement and in the first instance was connected
with the war."

As recent Russian scholarship
has shown, she continued, Moscow during the 1920s largely ignored
the Baltic countries after recognizing their independence. The
Kremlin at that time, Zubkova says, "had neither the forces,
nor the time, nor the opportunity to form and carry out a special
'Baltic policy.'"

(One curiosity, however, that
is sometimes remarked upon, the Moscow historian said is that
until 1925, the Soviet state did not transform its Western Front
into a military district. "There was already no war, but
there was a front." However, she pointed out, this had far
more to do with Poland than with the Baltic countries.)

Only in the 1930s did Stalin
begin to focus on the Baltic States as a region of particular
interest. The first Politburo decision in the archives, Zubkova
notes, dates from 1934, but even then, it reflected a general
interest. Only in the spring of 1939, with the threat of war
looming, did this interest take on a more precise focus.

In discussing the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact, Zubkova says simply that it had "secret protocols,"
that these "were nowhere published at the time, but that
"in the Baltic press the content of these secret agreements
was reflected with surprising precision," something that
forced the three governments to ask Moscow for guarantees that
there had not been any.

Not surprisingly, Stalin and
Molotov told the Balts that there had not been any agreement,
statements that some Russian writers continue to accept as true
and that informed Soviet commentary about this accord with Hitler
and continues to be reflected in some Russian writing to this
day.

As early as September 28, 1939,
after the Nazi and Soviet division of Poland, Zubkova added there
is documentary evidence that the USSR military commissariat had
prepared a plan for military intervention in Estonia (and later
in the other two Baltic countries), but even this does not prove
that the Kremlin initially planned to "swallow up"
the Baltic states.

The archival specialist continued
that while that "impression" certainly was created,
it cannot be confirmed by documents that "Stalin in the
fall of 1939 had the intention of making the Baltic region part
of the USSR." Instead, she suggested, he was interested
only in taking control of them so as to defend the Soviet Union.

At that time, the Soviet dictator
told Georgy Dimitrov that as a result of mutual assistance pacts
like those he planned to have with the Baltic states, "we
have found a form which will permit the drawing into the orbit
of the interests of the USSR an entire group of countries. For
the time being, we will preserve their state system and act without
seeking Sovietization."

Stalin added, however, that
"a time will come when [these countries] will do this themselves."
That policy, Zubkova continued, "was then realized not in
the Baltics but in the countries of Eastern Europe after the
war." And she insisted that Stalin's fears of the reaction
of the Western powers kept him from doing more in the Baltic
region in 1939.

Indeed, there are documents
in the archives which show that Moscow directed Soviet representatives
in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania not to "use the word 'sovietization'"
or to maintain contacts with left-wing forces lest the peoples
and governments of this region assume that was Moscow's intention.

Moreover, People's Commissar
Voroshilov issued a special directive to his commanders saying
that "the army would be going into a sovereign country and
that [commanders] must not permit any contacts with the local
population" or act in public in ways that local residents
would find in any way threatening.

But when in the spring of 1940,
Hitler occupied Norway, Denmark and France, Stalin decided to
take total control of the Baltic countries. He exploited the
case of two missing Red Army soldiers in Lithuania to provoke
a crisis, and Molotov drew up an ultimatum which it appears Stalin
softened somewhat before it was presented to the Lithuanian government

There is a widespread but mistaken
view that the Baltic governments accepted Moscow's ultimatum
without resistance, but that is not so, Zubkova said. And there
is an equally incorrect view that the Kremlin had "in this
case some sort of 'master plan'" of action, one that told
its representatives there what to do.

In fact, Zhdanov in Estonia,
Vyshinsky in Latvia and Dekanozov in Lithuania were frequently
uncertain about how to act because they had been directed to
form governments consisting not of Communists, people with whom
they were familiar, but rather of academics and journalists they
did not know but who were ready to cooperate with the Soviet
Union.

The elections that Moscow demanded
were a farce. There was no secret ballot, and there was also
no mention in the Moscow-approved party platform of "unification
with the Soviet Union," Zubkova pointed out, an arrangement
that undercuts all claims by Russian historians and others that
the Baltic states "petitioned" to join the USSR.

By forcing the Baltic countries
into the USSR in the way that he did, Zubkova concluded, "Stalin
created both for himself and for his heirs an enormous headache.
[And] this is a problem which continues to manifest itself even
now."

Had the Soviet leader simply
occupied the three Baltic countries and left their independence
in place, the Moscow historian said, the entire situation would
have been different. But what began in 1940 in Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania was "not an occupation," but rather the
"arrival of Soviet power."

And "the consequences of
the introduction of a Soviet regime" and the suppression
of the independent state existence of these three countries ,
Zubkova argued, "turned out to be worse [not only for them
but for the USSR] than any occupation could have been."
And she suggested that this was a lesson that Moscow had learned
when it moved into Eastern Europe in 1945.